As you might know Austin has a world-famous urban population of Mexican free-tailed bats. About 1.5 million of them live in vertical joints under the Congress Avenue bridge. It is a big deal to go watch them take off for their evening flight. Since the UT campus was a mere 25-ish blocks away, I caught the bus after work to the bridge area. There is a big park along either side of the river, and I walked a small portion of the hot and dusty trail with lots of other pedestrians. I found the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue and a few gems I did not know about. The picture with the Congress Avenue bridge in the background is viewed through a foreground of cypress "knees" and one of the ever-present grackles. As I said, the bat viewing is a big deal around here, with vendors to sell you beverages and boat rides available under the bridge (I actually heard that was pretty cool, but I will wait until my family arrives for that). Sitting on the grassy hill to watch is free! When I walked under bridge beforehand I could smell something musty-pungent(not real strong) and hear faint, high-pitched squeaks. I thought it was interesting to see a fair number of pigeons using the beams under the bridge - day shift vs. night shift I suppose. The first bats started flittering around at about 8:05 pm, then the population began moving in earnest at about 8:10 pm. The cloud of bats was not as thick as I expected, but it was neat to see this sort of streamer of bats twisting and turning into the distance over the river - hard to capture that with a camera. I, along with a lot of other people, got the general idea and did not wait to see the end. When I rode by on the bus at 8:45 there were still people on the bridge, but it was too dark to tell if there were still any bats coming out. I'm attaching video clips as well as pictures (sorry they are so grainy).
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